


Like Rum On The Fire

by nightships



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: 1x01 AU, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, CS AU, F/M, Soulmates, Tangled AU if you squint, soulmates where you know it's them when you first touch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 13:37:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3730918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightships/pseuds/nightships
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma Swan grows up learning to never expect the spark of true love on her skin and lives in Boston as a bail bondsperson. Killian Jones never expects to feel love again after he loses Milah, but finds his revenge may lie in the hands of the Savior. Both of them are surprised when he breaks into her home on the night of her birthday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Like Rum On The Fire

There’s a moment when the ship leaves Neverland in the distance behind them — a second when he crosses into safe seas and out of reach of Pan and his ever-growing handful of lost little children — where Killian Jones feels hope creeping up his spine. It’s not a bright thing, as the promise of finally finding the Crocodile is still steeped in months of searching once he leaves this place, but it’s more than he’s had in the last century. That, and he’s looking forward to leaving the bloody sweltering jungle for more than a couple nights on end.

(Finding himself so close to the lost boys’ camp on the island had been a dangerous accident, especially when he heard them whispering about the boy ruler of the island as they patrolled the beaches. Relief had flooded through him when he’d realized they were unaware of their shadow; the more he overheard from them without making himself known, the better.

Most of it was obvious. They were looking for him, of course. Terrorizing Captain Hook and his men was their favorite pastime. Less obvious were their plans to leave this realm and retrieve a child, a true believer. Pan never sounded more eager than he did when he spoke about the boy, about welcoming him home to this island and luring him into the comfort of their little tribe.

It was at the hushed mention of enchanted hearts that he forced himself to stop listening. The tattoo on his arm still stung, and memories of the woman he wore it for stung even deeper. Milah was his anchor, a reminder of what he was doing on this island in the first place — as if he ever forgot.

But then Pan’s voice turned sour. Mention of someone else, of a Savior, tore his attention away from the shadows of the boys in the firelight. Pan’s voice turned sour as he warned of someone who was rumored to be able to break the Curse, who could bring magic back, who could make it possible for them to find their _Truest Believer_ — and by extension, Rumplestiltskin.

The Savior was his key to getting revenge, and it only took minutes to convince Pan he was the man for the job. It didn’t matter what he promised, so long as he could leave.)

Emma was supposed to be home by now, changed out of this dress she’s been tugging down her thighs all night and into her favorite pair of pajamas. The particularly charming bail skip she’s spent the night chasing down has made her late to her annual date with her Princess Bride DVD. Emma doesn’t linger on the wish that her world was more like the one Westley and Buttercup adventured through, especially given the night she’s just endured, but she does think a birthday girl deserves a little leeway. The cupcake her supervisor sent her home with seems like it’ll do the job just fine.

Emma toes the door shut with her heel before resolutely kicking the it into the back of her couch along with its partner. Sitting on the cushioned barstool at her kitchen counter has never felt so comfortable.

The quiet that surrounds her as she hums happy birthday to herself isn’t uncomfortable in the least. It’s familiar, she tells herself. Practically tradition.

(Never mind that she’d spent most of her early life reaching out and hoping she would feel something in the hands of the families who took her home. It wasn’t exactly the definition of true love she’d grown up hearing about, but it was the one her younger self had craved. True love didn’t mean a soulmate or romance to ten-year-old Emma. It meant a sure meal every night, an actual mattress to sleep on, someone who made her feel like she was welcome when she walked in the room.

And when she met Neal and grabbed at his wrist that first time, nothing  happened at all, but it didn’t matter then. She’d stopped waiting for true love a while ago.)

Emma closes her eyes to make the only wish she’s ever allowed herself since she got out of jail, but before she can take a breath, something topples to the floor in a far corner of her apartment. She can’t place the kind of noise it is, but she doesn’t question the hair raising on the back of her neck. Silently, she slides off the stool and reaches for the first blunt object her hands can find: the cast iron skillet in her drying rack.

It could just be a noise. It could be her neighbor. It could be any number of things, Emma supposes, but the warning feeling in her gut doesn’t just go off for nothing. She shifts her grip, grabbing the pan handle with both hands as she slides into the room and finds what she’s looking for in a heap on the floor near her bed, surrounded by broken glass from her window.

There’s a man in her room, too busy cursing under his own breath and swiping at a small cut on his cheek to notice her. He’s bent over at the waist, chest heaving like he’s just run a marathon, and his breaths sound so ragged that for a moment she simply stares.

Then, as if he can actually hear her thinking, blue eyes shoot up and strike lightning into hers. Before his expression can even change, Emma’s arm is swinging, and then he’s out cold on the floor. She spends another long moment catching her own breath and staring between him and the hole that used to be her window, eyes finally landing on the shiny metal hook at his wrist.

Why did she always attract the crazy ones?

The man starts to wake fully a minute or two after she’s handcuffed his leather-coated arm to the leg of her bed frame. He doesn’t realize it at first, pulling his hand away from its restraint as if to rub at the lump on his head, but eventually the cold metal slides and hits his skin. His head lolls down when he blinks at the metal attracted to his wrist. To her surprise, he only chuckles, as if this is a regular Tuesday night for him.

“I’ll admit, Swan, I’m impressed. I can count the number of people who have bested me on one hand.”

She bristles at that, changing him from burglar to stalker in her head when she hears her own name roll off of his tongue. He isn’t an old skip; she’s sure she would have remembered the way his eyes are piercing her now. Emma schools her face into one that shows no vulnerability, only impatience and authority, and meets his stare head-on.

“You’ve got sixty seconds to explain how the hell you know my name and how you found me.”

He falters a little, but only for a second. In a second he’s grinning at her in a way she might have found charming if she saw it out on the street instead of handcuffed to the foot of her bed.

”I’m not sure I can dutifully tell the tale in such a short span, lass.”

Emma considers this, abandoning her mental countdown. He’s hiding something under that rough, accented voice, but she’s too busy ignoring the way his eyes are trailing over her to linger on it. If there’s one thing she won’t do, it’s letting him see he has an advantage over her.

“I don’t really know how this kind of thing usually goes for you,“ she says, taking a half-step to the side in an attempt to prove just how ineffective his tactics are, "but you picked a really bad window to climb through. You can sit here and tell me who you are and how you got here,” she offers, “or you can sit here and wait while I call the cops.”

The unnamed man sighs wearily and considers her for a moment, resting his hook and his hand in his lap as he weighs the cost of replying.

“I doubt you’d believe me if I told you,” he says.

Emma searches for the lie tucked under his words. If it exists, she can’t see it, although it’s not for lack of looking. The curve of his hook glints as he shrugs, and then those blue eyes are on her again, begging her to ask him what he’s talking about. Despite her better judgment, it’s almost working.

"Why?” she finally asks him. “Because I don’t put much stock in liars?”

“Because you don’t know who you _really_ are.”

If there’s a time to stop talking to him and go to the police, this is it. Bail bondsperson or no, she’s probably crazy not to have called the police yet, to have allowed him to distract her with stories as ridiculous as the outfit he’s wearing. It’s hard enough even looking at him when he sounds as serious as he does now. It occurs to her that he may not be the only one trying to get to her tonight, that he may not be working alone, and all of a sudden she’s feeling a little desperate herself.

“You’ll have plenty of time to tell me on the ride to the station,” Emma tells him, reaching down with the intention of cuffing his other, hooked wrist. Only now does she realize he’s been picking the damn cuffs with his hook.

Emma dives for his arms immediately, taking advantage of her position above him. His hooked arm swings up into her vision, sending her backwards down onto her knees. Adrenaline takes up residence in her veins for the third time tonight as she ducks to avoid his elbow, trying to stand herself up again without giving him room to knock her over.

It’s uncoordinated, not even a full-on fight. Had this been just another bail skip she was bringing in she might have even called it fun, given how he keeps rattling off little one-liners about good form and how he’d much prefer a woman on her back. In the end, it only takes a second for Emma to forget herself.

She means to swat him away, to create the distance she needs to think for a second and restrain him properly. What she does, though, is grab for his wrist where it waits protectively near his face. It’s that kind of recklessness that leads to her fingers brushing against the skin of his neck when she swipes at his collar. It’s why the backs of her knuckles skim the line of his throat. It’s why her nails brush along the stubble underneath his cheek as she grips onto the leather. It’s why she sees an actual static spark light up the room for a second as her skin meets his for the first time.

It’s completely silent in her bedroom now. He’s looking at her with wide, disbelieving eyes, and she can’t stop blinking over at him. Both of them are crouched together, frozen in the darkness of her bedroom, minds trying to accept what their bodies already know to be true.

“That was —”

“ _Shut up_ ,” Emma hisses. Killian watches her scramble away from him, but he knows there’s nowhere to go. He can tell from the terrified look on her face that she knows exactly what’s just happened to them, that she knows what it means. _True love._

For a second or two, it’s like he has a complete out-of-body experience. Something else must have happened, some kind of bizarre mistake, because there’s no way in all the realms that he could ever find this again. Not after Milah.

Killian knows two things about the woman he’s staring at right now: her name and what she’ll be capable of if she believes the story he came here to tell. Emma Swan meant blind hope before, but this is different. The certainty of knowing his happy ending lies with her changes everything.

Emma stares back at him, stiff with the sheer force of her own retreat. She can feel the future washing over her bones; even though she can’t see it yet, it’s the knowing that has her pushed against the wall.

Twenty-eight years of loneliness falls thin onto the carpet around her ankles as she stares at the dark-haired man in front of her, taking him in, at his full height. Certainty comes from nowhere within her chest, blooming as she meets his eyes in search again. Just like before, the lie isn’t there.

She doesn’t know how he manages to convince her, but by the end of the night Boston sits in her rearview and Killian sits in the passenger seat. Emma drives, hoping with everything she’s got that trusting someone won’t leave her empty this time.

(It doesn’t.)


End file.
